All posts tagged: karl burke

New technologies have a tendency to blur boundaries and bring together areas of life which we once felt to be very separate. Consider the way social networks have removed the dividing line between what was once public and private and it’s easy to see how true this can be. For the photographer Karl Burke, another such blurring appears to be taking place today between the fields of entertainment and war. As young adults and even children descend every more frequently into violent virtual realities, and armies increasingly fight wars at enormous distances, mediated by computer screens and console controllers, these two very different arenas seem to be coming closer together. In Harvest of Death, Burke enters into online first person shooter games which use contemporary conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan as backdrop for their gameplay. Taking on the role of a ‘simulated photographer’, he then takes screenshots of the aftermaths of in-game deaths. Burke felt it was important the photographs be physical artefacts, and so these screenshots were printed and re-photographed with the collidon wet …